Africa

More than 100 people have died from the latest Ebola outbreak in West Africa. With no cure or vaccine, it is one of the most deadly of viruses, killing between 60 to 90 percent of those infected. Heath officials in Conakry, the capital of Guinea, have set up isolation centers and are screening at the airport.

“It’s probably one of the more complicated outbreaks because it is occurring in a very densely-populated urban area, unlike previous outbreaks,” he said by phone from Conkary, which has a population of 2 million.

Dr. Jagatic described it as the biggest known Ebola outbreak an urban area.

Health officials do not expect the virus to go global and stress that Ebola is not easy to catch, requiring direct contact with an infected victim’s bodily fluids.

Appetite for rhino horn from Asia, in particular Vietnam, has driven the killing in South Africa, which ministers have warned in turn threatens the country’s tourism sector. Demand is so high that a kilogramme of rhino horn is now worth more than gold or cocaine.

The UK prime minister, David Cameron, is hosting a summit in London next month in a bid to tackle the trade which has also seen tens of thousands of elephants killed in Africa annually in recent years.

Conservationists said action must be taken now. Tom Milliken, rhino expert at wildlife trade monitors Traffic, said: “South Africa and Mozambique [a transit hub for wildlife products leaving Africa] must decisively up their game if they hope to stop this blatant robbery of southern Africa’s natural heritage. 2014 must mark the turning point where the world, collectively says ‘enough is enough’ and brings these criminal networks down.